14 DAY TRIAL // If you think you're brave and you're able to do anything in the world, you didn't hear this: a Chinese company called Guge Science and Technology Ltd. Co. takes Google to the judge because numerous consumers think the Mountain View company copied their name. The most important problem of this case is that a lot of customers contacted Guge because they thought they are talking with Google, the owner of the best search engine on the Internet. Because of that, the Chinese company decided to fill a complaint against the Mountain View giant and require it to change its name.
According to Reuters, the case was accepted by a court in Beijing's Haidian district, but the Google officials refused to confirm and comment the lawsuit. It seems like the Chinese "Google" is very similar with the same pronunciation of "Guge", a matter that makes the consumers confound the names.
"We just want Google to change their commercial name," Tian Yunshan, a company official, told Reuters on Friday. "We have already passed our demands on to Google ... We will see what happens in court," the same source reports.
This is quite the first time when the Mountain View company is sent to the court and required to change its name but I think the chances for winning the lawsuit by the local company are minimal.
Google is continuously affected by an impressive number of lawsuits but, the "winner" of the competition is surely the popular video sharing service YouTube as it caused the biggest number of problems for the parent company. Since its acquisition in October 2006 for $1.65 million, YouTube gathered numerous complaints from other media companies that accused Google for copyright infringement. The latest lawsuit was filed by Viacom, the owner of MTV and Comedy Central that required no less than $1 billion in damages.